A study reveals that snacks and overeating are two most dangerous factors of people doing dieting.

In US, the average daily calorie consumption has risen 3 fold in 30 years amounting to 2374 kilo calories.

According to the researchers, due to large portion sizes and extra snacks, the focus turns to high calories foods.

They showed in PLoS Medicine that obesity can be regulated by concentrating on how much should be reduced and how many times should people eat.

The levels of obesity have harshly increased since 1970s in many Western Countries. The research was done in US, one thirds of adults i.e. more than 72 million people are obese.

A group from University of North Carolina studied the information from food research done in 70s, 80s, 90s and the last decade. The research has all the details of all the food and drink a person takes in 24 hours. The average daily consumption of US citizen has risen from 1803 kcal in 1977-78 to 2374 kcal in 2003-06. In the last decade itself, the average daily calorie intake increased to 229kcal.

The various causes in energy consumption are the number of calorie (energy) in a particular quantity of food (energy density), size of the portion and number of snacks and meals taken in a day. The scientists are of the opinion that every of these causes has increased, rise in the number of eating chances and portion size are responsible for almost every change.

They opine that the hard work done to regulate obesity need to concentrate on decreasing the number of snacks and meals per day and portion size.

“These findings suggest a new focus for efforts to reduce energy imbalances in US adults,” write Kiyah Duffey and Barry Popkin of the University of North Carolina in the journal PloS Medicine.

Commenting on the paper, Dr Aine O’Connor, a scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation said: “Many factors influence total energy intake that can lead to [being] overweight and obesity but it is possible that having more eating occasions through the day, for example by frequent snacking, would increase calorie consumption and so lead to weight gain”.

“This study also looked at portion size and studies have shown that having larger portions of food lead to an increased intake.”The researchers were based in the US, but many of the factors causing the obesity epidemic there are mirrored in the UK and, for those trying to control their weight, it is important to manage both how much and how often they eat.”